Andre Ingram’s NBA Dream
If you follow the NBA you would’ve heard about the story of 32 year old Andre Ingram. He was a basketball player in the G-league (one of the NBA’s developmental league) for 10 years trying to make it to the NBA. When we see new faces in the NBA usually they are in their early twenties, about to enter their prime and have years of basketball ahead of them. Then there is Andre Ingram, who did not give up on his dream to play in the NBA one day. This past week that dream became a reality. In his first NBA game against the best team in the league, he dropped 19 points off the bench… amazing for his first game. His salary for the 3 days he was a Laker is reported to be just over $13,800. His salary for playing in the g-league for the entire year was $19,000. He even had to pick up an extra job in the off season tutoring math to make ends meet. But that’s not the whole story. Because of his incredible journey to the NBA and how he performed on the court, someone wants to make a movie out of his life. This for sure will bring more money into his pockets.
What I want to highlight is that no matter what the situation looks like you should not give up. If you believe that God has put something on your heart to do, press forward until you complete the task and can’t go anymore. At age 32, this is when you start to see NBA players start to decline in their play and disappear from the league. Oftentimes we don’t hear about them anymore. In Andre Ingram’s case this is only the beginning of his journey. Andre’s dream was probably to play in the NBA one day, but God’s plans for him are just getting started. I am looking forward to seeing what the final story will be about his life when it’s all said and done.
Mark Zuckerberg
The other story that I learned from this week was about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. As you may know Facebook was involved in a scandal involving Cambridge Analytica and the presidential election. Although it hasn’t been proven that Facebook did anything directly to aid Cambridge Analytica, they did not take the necessary steps to stop them from taking advantage of a loophole in the system.
Mark Z. was brought before the Senate and the US House of Representatives to answer questions about how Facebook manages users private information and their role in the data breach. Mark took some tough questions and it was reflected in Facebook’s stock price for those two days.
Two things that I want to focus on here. The first is that even though it hasn’t been proven that Facebook did anything wrong in this situation, they could’ve done more to protect their users data. This is where they dropped that ball and are paying the price for it now. In your business be sure to think of as many negative scenarios that can happen in your business and put up some guard rails to protect you or your clients from getting into trouble. Go the extra mile to protect yourself because there are people out there that are working hard to take advantage of loopholes in every system for their own benefit.
The other thing that I want to focus on is the opportunity in this situation. Through Mark’s time answering questions, he actually made almost 3 billion dollars due to the 401 million shares of Facebook that he owns. (Read more about that here) If you bought any Facebook shares while it was low that you would be enjoying this now also.
The takeaway here is that if you are observant to what is going on in the world you can take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening around you. Like the sons of Issachar in 1 Chronicles 12:32, you need to know the times and the seasons and know what you need to do.
Be blessed and make something great happen today!